Vehicle registration fee is foggy

A woman puts new registration sticker on her car. PAUL SAKUMA, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Q. I guess I'm living in the past. Back when a car was old, registration fees went way down. I have a 1996 Honda Accord and pay fees each year that are more then a friend who has a 2002 Buick. I keep hoping each November when I receive my notification about my fees I'll get a surprise and find they went down. They haven't decreased for the past few years.

– Ann Smith,

Anaheim

A. Do you find the Tax Code complicated, Ann?

Our state's formula for how much we pay to register our vehicles each year apparently wants to keep up with the feds' whacky ways.

Honk rang up Artemio Armenta, a Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman in Sacramento, and he explained that we all get hit with the $46 base fee and the $23 for the California Highway Patrol.

Then there is the Vehicle License Fee, based on the purchase price or the car's value. This is the portion of the bill that decreases for 11 years, and a large reason why the same types of vehicles can have two different registration fees. Every time a car is sold, the decreasing of the Vehicle License Fee starts anew.

Counties can get in on the act and grab some of your cash, as can air-quality management districts – so where you live also plays into how much you must fork over.

Q. Last week, I saw an Orange County sheriff's deputy driving and using a cell phone in San Juan Capistrano. Is that legal?

– Tony Saltikov,

San Juan Capistrano

A. If the officer was making the call in the line of duty, yes.

The cell phone law exempts “emergency-services professionals,” such as cops, firefighters and permitted ambulance drivers, so long as they are in an authorized vehicle and the call relates to their duties.

Some police agencies have more restrictive policies, to keep such phone calls to a minimum, which is a good thing – a cop's good example is a much more powerful teaching tool than a citation book.

Honkin' tip: Check out Discovery Channel's “Airplane Repo,” Honk's new favorite show. Yes, it is quite suspicious how each time one of the fellas grabs a plane there is always television-friendly drama, but Honk isn't going to let facts get in the way of his reality TV.

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